Secretary of State John Kerry seems to believe that Iranian elections are just like American ones. In fact, he would describe them as "normal." At least, that's what he told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations last Thursday in his first Senate hearing since his confirmation. Here's Kerry: Iranians " are two months away from an election. The election is on June 14th and every bit of evidence we have - this very week or next week they declare who their candidates are - and there is an enormous amount of jockeying going on with the obvious normal struggle for attention between hard-liners and people who might want to make an agreement etc. We all know what life is like here in the Senate six months from a presidential election, so you can imagine what it's like there two months from theirs. And so I think this is a moment for us to be a little patient." According to Kerry, therefore, the struggle between "hard-liners" - the folks who want to annihilate the Jewish state and continue to be the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism - and the "people who might want to make an agreement" - might being the operative word, given that pro-Western Iranians are not permitted to be candidates at all - is just "normal" democratic give and take. Equally disturbing, is that Iranian election time is understood by the Obama administration as a time for patience, rather than a time to encourage and support dissent. A repeat of June 2009, when the President watched Iranians yearning for freedom die in the streets. The frightening new normal.